


Three Hours and a Lifetime

by tyrsenian



Category: Whiskey Cavalier (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Linear Narrative, legitimate tea making, really only rated T for like two swear words, some shipping if you squint really hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 10:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20006725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyrsenian/pseuds/tyrsenian
Summary: Will's never seen Frankie's apartment before. She wishes she could keep it that way.





	Three Hours and a Lifetime

**Author's Note:**

> A tremendous thanks to thesearchforbluejello for her suggestion of plot mitosis, insight into characterization, and excellent beta-ing! This fic probably would not exist, and certainly not in a coherent form, if not for her.

The first time, he knocks. Raps on her door and waits for a reply that doesn’t come before testing the handle. He’s a little surprised when it turns in his grip, hinges creaking softly as he cracks open the door. “Frankie?”

The room is dark, but the lighting from the hall is enough that he can see her in the bed near the far wall. She groans and rolls over, and he tries again. “Come on, time to wake up!” 

He considers reaching out to shake her, but abandons the idea pretty quickly. They’ve spent enough nights in the same room that he knows she startles easily at times like this, on the edge of consciousness. He’d like to avoid getting punched in the face. 

He turns on the lamp instead, and it seems to do the trick. “Right. ‘m awake,” she says, the words coming out a little fuzzy. She rolls back over to face him, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the lamp’s glow. 

“Do you know where you are?” he asks.

She scrunches her forehead, taking a moment to think. “My apartment.” 

“Do you know why I’m here?” 

“‘Cause they wouldn’t let me leave the hospital alone and then I couldn’t ditch you.” 

Will frowns. “That’s one way to put it.” 

“Do you have any other questions, or can I go back to sleep?” 

He knows she’s going for annoyed, but she just sounds exhausted. “Nope, I’m done. See you in three hours.” 

He turns off the lamp, closing the door behind him on his way out.

* * *

_ “Can you… do that any faster?” Will’s standing guard at the door, looking over at her with annoying frequency. _

_ Frankie raises her eyebrows, her expression dangerous. “You wanna try this?”  _

_ “I don’t know how to--”  _

_ “Then stop. Talking.” She turns back to the safe, putting an ear to the door as she starts to rotate the dial. She’s turned off comms to concentrate, but she can hear Will asking the team how much time they’ve got till the next sweep. Judging by the noise he makes and the way his eyes dart back over to her, it’s not nearly as much as they’d like.  _

_ Will takes a half-step into the hall and recoils immediately, shutting the door and moving to one side.  _

_ “Frankie--”  _

_ “Got it!” There’s a final click and the door to the safe swings open. She grabs the battered ledger leaning against the wall of the safe, and shoves it in her backpack.  _

_ “Good, ‘cause we just ran out of time.”  _

_ The footsteps outside are getting louder. Frankie leaves her bag in the middle of the floor, pulling her gun from its holster as she heads to the opposite doorpost. She flattens herself against the wall, nodding to Will in the split second before the door opens.  _

_ The first guard comes in firing, his shots shattering the picture window on the opposite wall. Frankie knocks him out before he has a chance to adjust his aim.  _

_ The two of them are quickly out-numbered as guards pour through the door faster than they can be taken down. She hadn’t anticipated a gunfight-- according to Standish, they should have had plenty of time to get in and out between rounds-- and she realizes too late that she’d left her spare clip in her bag. She’ll have a word with Standish later, she thinks, as one guard lifts his gun and she hits him in the chest with her last bullet. Or, more accurately, quite a few angry words.  _

_ Frankie dives behind a desk as another guard starts shooting, waiting till he’s changed direction to tackle him. The man’s gun skitters across the room, but she doesn’t have time to go after it. She picks herself up off the floor to find more guards converging on her. _

_ She’s fighting off two men in the next instant, trying to keep an eye on Will as she ducks out of the paths of flying bullets, and she doesn’t see the first guard get back up from the ground. _

_ “Frankie, behind you--”  _

_ She hears the panic in Will’s voice before her mind processes his words and turns instinctively toward him. The guard lunges at her from the edge of her vision and she isn’t quite fast enough to move out of the way. He grabs her by the shoulders, his momentum carrying them forward until she’s slammed against the wall. Pain explodes in the back of her head as it connects with brick, and then there is nothing. _

* * *

He doesn’t hesitate before turning on the lamp this time. She mutters something rude as she sits up, slowly, one hand pressed to her temple.

“Do you know what time it is?” 

She squints up at him. “Probably about three hours since the last time you asked.”

She seems lucid enough, her speech relatively clear, but there are dark circles under her eyes and her face is lined with pain she’s trying not to show. 

“Do you want more Tylenol?” he asks. “It’s been six hours since your last dose.”

Frankie hesitates. He’s surprised and then a little concerned that she doesn’t tell him she’s fine; she must be feeling even worse than she looks.

She sighs. “Sure.”

Will nods, turning and heading for the kitchen. He comes back a few minutes later with the bottle and a glass of water and sets both on the nightstand. 

“Thanks,” she mutters, and he thinks she sounds vaguely embarrassed. She isn’t used to relying on other people, to having to rely on other people. She doesn’t like it, he can tell, as much as she doesn’t like having him in her apartment. 

He studies the framed charcoal drawing on the wall as she reaches for the bottle and dumps out two pills. It’s a simple scene, a woman and small child evoked in coarse strokes of black on white, in a style similar to the watercolor hanging in the kitchen and the paintings in the living room. It’s taken all of his self-restraint not to ask about them. One day, he thinks. When she invites him into her apartment without a doctor’s explicit order.

He turns his head back to find her watching him, her face carefully neutral. He wants very much to ask. He forces a small smile and leaves the room without a word.

* * *

_ Will is standing over her, eyes wide with concern. Frankie bristles, though she doesn’t quite remember why his expression should annoy her. She stares at him for a few seconds before it occurs to her that he’s trying to get her attention.  _

_ “We’ve gotta get out of here,” he’s saying. She’s not sure exactly where “here” is, but it hurts to think, so she lets Will pull her to her feet without question.  _

_ Static surges from the edges of her vision with the sudden motion and nausea rises in her throat. She closes her eyes, sagging against Will until her body starts to accept its new upright position. He has an arm around her waist, guiding her towards the exit of a building she doesn’t remember entering. _

_ He’s wearing both backpacks, his on his back and hers on his chest, and it occurs to her that he looks like a giant turtle. She giggles. Will turns his head sharply to look at her, his eyes narrowing. “Oh boy. You are definitely concussed.” _

_ She opens her mouth to argue, closes it as she realizes he’s probably right. She considers arguing anyway, but she’s concentrating too hard on being vertical and not throwing up to think of anything clever.  _

_ They’ve almost reached the car by the time she remembers to turn comms back on. Suddenly Susan’s voice is in her ear, asking if she’s ok, and she wishes everyone would stop sounding so goddamn worried. _

_ “I’m fine,” she says as Will tells the team she needs to get checked out at a hospital. _

_ He turns the key in the ignition and Jai starts giving directions, but she’s stopped paying attention.  _

* * *

Will wakes to a crash. He bolts upright, heart racing, before he sees the light coming from the kitchen down the hall. Burglars and assassins, in his experience, tend not to leave the lights on.

There’s a muffled noise coming from the same direction which, he tells himself, is definitely not the sound of someone crying. He retains that certainty until he enters the kitchen and finds Frankie standing in front of an open cabinet. She’s facing away from him, her body shaking as she sobs. Boxes of tea are scattered around her on the counter and floor. 

“Frankie?” he asks. It comes out soft, almost hesitant, and he maintains that he’s trying not to startle her. Because he knows how to handle emotional situations. He’s good at that. He is less good at handling Frankie.

She jumps and spins around, closing her eyes briefly against the dizziness from the sudden movement. “Get away from me,” she hisses. He can see fear and anger on her face, her expression not diminished by the shining tracks of tears running down her cheeks. 

Will freezes for just a second before nodding and backing out of the kitchen. He picks up his phone from where he’d left it on the living room table, unlocks it and makes a call.

Jai picks up almost immediately. “What happened? Is she okay?” 

Will can hear the sleep evaporating, and his stomach drops as he recognizes something just short of terror in the other man’s voice. “Yeah, she’s fine,” he answers quickly.

“So you’re calling me at--” There’s a pause and Will assumes Jai’s checking the time, “at four in the morning to tell me Frankie is fine.” The words are dangerously slow and even.

“I…” Will starts. “She’s crying, Jai. What am I supposed to do?” He realizes too late that he might possibly be panicking.

“Frankie and I don’t really do emotions,” Jai explains as though talking to a six-year-old. “That’s kind of our thing.” 

“You’ve known each other for, what, ten years and she’s never once cried in front of you?” 

“She has not.”

Will is silent for a moment, processing this. 

“Do you think I should call Susan?”

There’s a loud sigh and then a click on the other end of the line. Will decides that that’s probably not an unreasonable response. 

He takes a deep breath and heads back into the kitchen. Frankie’s sitting on the floor now, her back against the cupboard. She looks up at Will as he enters the room, still sniffling, and stares as if daring him to comment.

“What happened?” he asks.

“I don’t have any chai,” she says, her voice catching. “I really wanted chai.” She looks like she’s about to start crying again.

“Hey,” he says, crouching down next to her on the floor. “It’s okay, we can make our own. Do you have any spices?” 

“Yeah, in the cabinet on the left.” 

Will picks through the surprisingly well-stocked cabinet, selecting the ground ginger and cloves. Maybe it’s unfair of him to be surprised by the shelves full of spices in the apartment of a former assassin, he muses as he searches for cardamom. The profession doesn’t require an empty kitchen. 

He finds a pot and fills it with water and spices, setting on the stove and lighting the burner before turning back to Frankie. She’s still sitting on the floor, watching him with a slightly dazed expression. 

“Do you want to sit in a chair?” he asks cautiously. 

“Uh, sure.” 

That guarded look is returning to her face, and Will finds himself almost relieved. He’s approaching familiar territory. He helps her up, guiding her to the closest chair at the kitchen table. “Thanks,” she says quietly, not quite meeting his eyes. 

Will waits in silence for the water to boil, picking the boxes of tea up from the ground and stacking them neatly back on their shelf. 

* * *

_ She’d fallen asleep on the way back from the hospital, but she jerks awake as Will shifts into park and kills the engine. The confusion on her face turns to something approaching panic as she registers the apartment building in front of them. _

_ “How do you know where I live?” _

_ Will does his best to look offended. “I’m a spy!” _

_ She narrows her eyes at him. “You asked Susan, didn’t you?”  _

_ He doesn’t respond to that, but his face seems to take on a slightly darker shade of pink. “Let’s get you inside, okay?”  _

_ Frankie doesn’t move. “Any chance I could convince you to just go home?” she asks. She tries to voice the question innocently, but her voice comes out higher than she’d intended.  _

_ He doesn’t respond to that either. Instead, he looks at her pointedly until she sighs and opens the car door.  _

_ “Just don’t… pry.”  _

_ Will blinks, startled by the explicit request. “Of course not.” _

_ He follows her into the stairwell, offering a hand when she stumbles halfway up the first flight. She ignores him, leaning her head against the wall and gripping the railing so hard her knuckles start to turn white.  _

_ “Are you alright?” he asks, though she clearly isn’t. Her skin has gone pale and she’s taking deep and heavy breaths. _

_ “Yeah, ’m fine.”  _

_ She straightens up again after a few more seconds, climbing the stairs on unsteady legs.  _

_ They make it to the third floor and she asks for her keys from the backpack he’s still carrying. Will watches as she unlocks the door and he tries not to feel like an intruder.  _

_ He’s not quite sure what he’d expected— a bed in the middle of an empty warehouse, maybe— but it isn’t this. The white walls and the bare wooden furniture, the slightly cramped feel of a typical New York apartment. The books with cracked spines and yellowed pages stacked neatly on a bookshelf. It’s an uncommon blend of well-worn and impersonal, he finds himself thinking. And it wouldn’t be altogether surprising, if not for the paintings. _

_ There are four that he can see in the living room, nature scenes done with acrylics and oil paints in a style that could almost be considered impressionist. The texture of layered paint is visible even from where he’s standing, and he knows they’re not prints. _

_ The same signature is scrawled in the bottom right corner of each piece; he wonders idly, and then much less idly, who it belonged to. He thinks back to her request. Don’t pry. _

_ Will follows her into the kitchen where she fills a glass with tap water and empties a bottle of pills into her hand.  _

_ “There’s… food, if you’d like any.” Frankie waves her other hand vaguely in the direction of the cabinets. “I’m going to bed.” _

_ “I’m guessing I get the couch,” Will says. _

_ She rolls her eyes, and he thinks he detects a hint of a smile. _

* * *

Will adds the tea bags to the boiling water and shuts off the flame, turning to examine the watercolor in its frame above the table as he waits for the tea to steep. 

Frankie is the first to break the silence .  “They were my father’s.”

“I didn’t ask,” he says quickly, focusing his attention back on the stovetop.

“I know. But you were not asking very loudly.” 

Will fishes out the tea bags and adds milk and sugar to the pot before pouring the liquid into two mugs he’d found sitting on the dish rack. He carries both over to the table and sits down across from her. 

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to-- I know you don’t owe me an explanation.” 

Frankie shrugs and takes a cautious sip of her tea. “This is… actually pretty good.” 

“The amount of surprise in that statement offends me.” 

She smiles, but it fades quickly. She puts down her mug and raises her head, and he gets the impression that she’s staring through him rather than at him as she opens her mouth to speak.

“He was an artist, but he got a job as a bank teller after I was born. He always said he was gonna move to Paris and open a gallery when he retired.”

“Paris is overrated,” Will says. She laughs, and it’s a nervous sound bordering on delirious: a little too loud and a little too high-pitched. 

“I hated them for it, you know?” She announces it almost dreamily. “For not telling me they were coming, for getting themselves killed. It sounds stupid, but--” 

“It’s not,” Will says quietly. “I’ve been there.”

She looks at him with an expression he can’t quite read. Something close to surprise with just a hint of confusion. He smiles back at her, but he knows it doesn’t reach his eyes. 

“I didn’t want to keep any of the paintings,” she says after a moment. “I told Kelly to get rid of everything in that garage.” 

She follows his gaze back up to the painting on the wall, the lone daffodil growing against a fence post in the crisp light of early spring. “He left this one to me in his will, and I almost threw it out. 

“I hated that all that was left of him was his damned artwork. He used to come home every day and spend hours working on his paintings in the garage. He’d tell me I could be anything I wanted when I grew up, but if I valued my sanity, I shouldn’t be an artist. And I get it, I think. He didn’t want me to make his decisions, repeat his mistakes. But as a kid, I resented him for it. For not letting me into his world.”

Frankie stops talking and picks up her mug, her eyes searching Will’s face for a reaction.

“Why that painting?” he asks carefully. 

She stares at him a little longer, taking a sip of tea and putting the mug back on the table before she answers. “I loved daffodils when I was really little. He’d have to stop me from pulling them out of the garden to carry around with me. He must have painted that when I was about five; it was in the garage for as long as I could remember, but it was never for sale. 

“He wanted me to know he had loved me, I think, and I hated that he hadn’t tried as hard when he was alive. It’s funny, just how badly tangled love and resentment can get.” 

She breaks off, looking concerned. “Oh god, am I rambling?” 

Will is the king of rambling, he knows, and she had yet to approach his level. “You’re fine,” her assures her. But she seems to be done talking.

“None of this is, um, in any of my files,” Frankie says at last. “And I will shoot you in both kneecaps and leave you to die if you tell anyone. Even Susan.” She narrows her eyes thoughtfully. “Especially Susan.” 

She doesn’t look like she’s joking.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

They sit in silence for another few minutes, finishing their tea in the dim lighting and warm air of the small kitchen. Frankie’s eyelids start to flutter, her blinks becoming longer and more frequent. 

She finally stands up and pushes in her chair. “I’m gonna go back to bed now. Thanks for the chai.” 

He stays seated at her table and he sets the timer on his phone for another three hours.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, there are references in here to both Leverage and Castle because I am officially fandom trash.


End file.
